Quickloader Reboot

Some of you will be aware I started work on designing a more compact verison of the original Quickloader card.

Macnoyd did the hard work and created a schematic of the original card for me to work from.

With that schematic I put in a solid 3 hours work created a new smaller, low chip count design and board layout.

Well tonight I kicked in another 5 hours and wrote the GAL rules that will pull it all together and make it work.

I also just ordered prototype boards, so in a week I will know if it works. Once I know thew design works I'll order a production run of the new boards with gold edges.

There is a plan to write some software that will take the eprom images created by the original utilities and write them into the flash ROM on the card without the need for a universal programmer running on a PC. Eventually that proram will be included in the standard ROM image. But until that utility is written a programmer will be needed.

This is what the protoype card looks like. Its quite small at 56mm x 66mm.

The prototypes are complete and waiting on DHL pickup, so I should have them on Monday.
If all goes well then I'll order a production run of 40 cards. So we are probably a week or two away from production cards being ready to ship

Great! Interested to see your result. I'm currently working on the Flash ROM code now. (going a bit slow right now) Maybe at some point we'll be ready for a whole new product intro.

I think there's great value in an "instant load" card like the QuikLoader. Bootable SSD's are great but this card does have the advantage of instant selectable DOS plus 2.5 times more "instant load" applications over a floppy emulator.

I had this issues with the original 16K RAM card and had to follow Jim Sather's recomendation . The 16K RAM Cards that have the ribbon cable tied to the RAM on the motherboard seemed to be the type consistent with the issue described in your above reference.

I haven't looked at the logic on the Saturn 128K card but I'm using an original Saturn card and it seems to work fine without the described modification.

To be clear, this is in reference to the original TTL version QuikLoader by Jim Sather. I can't speak for the Reboot version.

I guess now would be a good time to introduce a new TTL version of the QuikLoader based on the original design by Jim Sather. This is the result of breaking down the original QL board to a schematic, removing the chip enable circuit to the separate EPROMS, tying the address lines direct to the new Flash EEPROM and replacing with a 512K Flash chip. The QL code used by Jim Sather is what controls this board and each 64Kx8 section is "banked" in the 512K x8 chip in sections from $0000- 7FFF, $1000 to 1FFF, etc up to $7FFF. The board design was based on my prototye (shown at the top of this threat) and created by an AppleFritter member who also shares this enthusiasm and has re-created the original QuikLoader board in recent past. The design of this compact version board is exactly as Jim Sather designed it, only instead of spending hours programming EPROMS, you get the same result in 10 to 15 seconds using a flash programmer. This board does not use GAL technology. Strictly TTL. Flash EEProm programming devices for changing the EEPROM code are readily available on eBay for around $50-$75.

I'm currently working on some great new ROM files for this unit and will annouce availability soon. Stay tuned....

The Saturn's logic upon reset is the same as of the original language/16K RAM cards, e.g. not to change RAM card's state upon reset , therefore the quikLoader is NOT compatible with both. This behavior allows persistent code to replace ROM after reset and is quite useful.

I think I follow what you're saying regarding the RAM card not resetting with the QuikLoader, but I'm unsure of what you mean when you say "NOT compatible".

When I turn on the computer OR Reset the computer, the QuikLoader takes over the bootup every time. If there is something in the RAM Card after a Reset, depending upon what's there and the memory location pointers that access the memory card, more times than not I would have to do a hard reset to bring things back to norm. This also happens a lot with games and utilities, particularly the ones that are big memory users, so re-boots are not unusual to most.

If I force the QuikLoader to (say) load ProDos upon startup, it does so by loading the RAM card each time. If I load DOS, Integer Basic get's moved into the RAM card each time. If there is something in the RAM Card, it over-writes it. The QuikLoader actually uses the RAM card as a part of it's function, so I don't fully understand what you are saying when you say 'not compatible'. Please explain. Thanks in advance.

Yes, those application notes are pretty clear with regards to the ][e.

All my testing is done on the Apple ][ and Plus. The ][e was a new model when the QuikLoader was around, and by the looks of the QLoader documents, Jim Sather was making last minute corrections and additions in order to keep up. I vaguely remember this at the time, though I never had used a ][e. By the time the ][e went through it's "enhanced" upgrade, the QuikLoader had pretty-much ceased production. I'm not sure how well the card works with a ][e with exception of games. I have a ROM copy of AppleWorks with French titles for the ][e. but I've never actually tried it in a ][e. I tried it in a ][ Plus and it fails.

After I get a few Flash RAM sets going for the ][Plus to get this party started, I'll start working on ][e compatibility issues. One step at a time...

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